Eyes of the Emperor (6 page)

On the afternoon of December 10, Sweet hit us with another bombshell.

“Form up!”

We scrambled into position. “All Japs move over to my right,” he said. “The rest of you stay where you are.”

I hesitated, stunned again by how ugly that word sounded coming from his mouth.

I glared at Sweet, getting angrier and angrier about how the army was treating us, like we couldn't be trusted. Just Japs. Burn their sampans. Separate them from the real soldiers, the loyal ones.

“Now!” Sweet shouted.

Slowly, I fell in with the rest.

Sweet dismissed the other troops and turned back to us. “Get your rifles and bayonets and bring them and any
ammunition you have over to these trucks. The supply sergeant will check them in. Then gather your belongings and take down your shelters and relocate them over there.”

He turned and pointed to a weedy patch of red dirt on the other side of the field.

“You are not to leave the immediate vicinity of your shelters for any reason without permission, not even to go to the latrine, is that understood?”

No one answered. Not one man.

“Is that
understood
?”

For half the night I listened to men standing just outside the flaps of their tents relieving themselves. Never in all my life had I heard a sound as lonely as that.

Reveille woke us at five the next morning.

I stepped out into the warm air… and froze.

A sick, sour taste rose in my throat. Because what I saw were eyes.

Eyes behind sandbags.

Eyes behind machine guns.

Eyes all around us.

Other soldiers came out of their tents, yawning and stretching.

Waking to those eyes.

Sweet was leaning against a truck parked just inside the
ring of machine guns. “Rise and shine to a new day, miserable grunts, and listen up. You will each receive a supply of field rations, but you will do no work. You will remain here. When you need to use the latrine, you will ask permission to be escorted to it.”

We were under
guard
?

“Please,” he said. “Somebody step out of line. Anyone. I would
love
to deal with that.”

We got our rations and milled around the tents.

I felt like I'd been stabbed with a broken bottle. What were they thinking? That we were going join up with the guys who bombed us? Were they insane?

It got worse.

Later that day, Chik got a note from his Wahiawa girlfriend, Helen. She said the FBI was going into Japanese homes all over the island, arresting men and taking them away.
Lot of families are so afraid,
she wrote.

It made my head spin.

No, no, no, this is all wrong.

I couldn't stand still. Pacing, pacing. Had they arrested Pop? Or even
Herbie
?

I had to know.

What was going on out there? All we got were rumors and notes slipped inside from families and friends.

That night I asked a guard for permission to call home.

“Can't let you do that,” he said. “Orders.”

“But—”

“Now you just go on back to your tent before you get yourself in more trouble than you might care to be in, you hear?”

What could I do?

“My cousin,” Shig said later that night in our blacked-out bivouac. “You know where he's at? Japan. He went to visit my dad's family. Now he's stuck there.”

I cringed; that had been my own fear.

“Ho,” Chik said. “What if they make him go in the Japan army?”

Shig's eyes widened. “Ahh! Me and him could come face to face on the battlefield. What I going do then?”

Cobra spat into the darkness. “Ain't going be no battlefield, you fool. Not for you, anyways. You done. You not even a grunt no more. You a prisoner now. The army ain't going say it, but when they look at us they don't see soldiers. What they see is Japs. What they see is enemies.”

“Maybe,” Chik said. “But they going straighten it out. They just confused now. Nobody knows what to do with us, that's all. Gotta be something like that.”

“Pfff.”

“What?” Chik said.

“Nothing.”

“No, tell me. Whatchoo thinking?”

Cobra spat again. “Okay. Listen. Try see what I saying, ah? First, they split you off from all the other local guys, right? Then they take away your Springfield, your bayonet, your bullets, and your pocketknife, if you was dumb enough to give them that. Then they make you go bat'room in the dirt by your tent, and when you wake up next day you got machine guns all around you. You gotta look at that and think, We prisoners. Right? Am I right, Eddy?”

“You right,” I said, scraping mud off my boots with a
stick. Who cared anymore? Seemed like we were guilty no matter what we did. So why even fight it? Like Pop always said—
Shikataganai,
Way it is.

But the next day the machine guns were gone.

Nobody ever said a word about why they came or why they left.

Then the army stopped training us.

The Hawaiians, Portuguese, and Chinese still got trained. But all the Japanese got was cleanup work, what they gave to the lowest boot camp grunts. Shoeshine boys and dishwashers.

“They so wrong about us, Cobra,” I said, hunching over my tin dinner plate. “Makes me mad.”

He nodded. “To them we all look like Hirohito. They see us, they see the guys in those planes dropping bombs on them. We got the eyes of the Emperor. They scared of us. Scared.”

That afternoon we were free to go where we wanted. So I went up to the post exchange, the army store, and stood in line to call home.

We didn't have a telephone at our house, so I had to call the Higashis, our next-door neighbors.

Mrs. Higashi answered on the second ring.
“Moshimoshi.”

“Mrs. Higashi,” I said. “This is Eddy Okubo.”

“Eddy!”

“I'm trying to find Ma, or Herbie, if she's not home.”

“Oh, oh, yes, you went army, I remember. Wait, I go find your mama.”

She clunked the phone down. I could hear her scurrying out.

A minute later Ma came on the line, out of breath. “Eddy…is that you?”

“It's me, Ma, is everything okay? Where's Pop, where's Herbie?”

A long pause.

“We all right,” she said. “What about you? Are you eating? Do you have enough—”

“Ma, I'm fine, but what about Pop? Is he home?”

That silence again.

“Ma?”

“He went down Immigration, day after those planes came. He…he turn himself in.”

“
Why,
Ma? What did he do?”

“You know him, so stubborn when he get some idea.”

“What idea, Ma?”

“He went down there because he was ashamed for what Japan did.…It hurt him, Eddy.”

“Where's he now?”

“Nobody knows. He didn't come back yet.”

“But that was almost a week ago.”

“Lot of men got arrested.”

“Where's Herbie?”

“Home. He's okay.”

“What about Bunichi? Where's he?”

“I don't know.”

“But why would they keep Pop? He didn't do anything. They can't just hold him for… for
what
?”

She didn't answer.

“Ma. How you going live? How you going get money?”

“We have savings.”

The cigar box. College money. Everything Pop had saved. “Listen, Ma. The army pays me thirty dollars a month, remember? I send you that.”

“ 'S okay, Eddy. We have friends—the Higashis, the Hamamotos. And Herbie working part-time. They need lot of help down the harbor right now, fixing boats. Don't worry about us. You just stay safe, Eddy.”

“Nothing going happen to me, Ma.”

I listened to her breathing.

We were running out of things to say. I could hear Mrs. Higashi in the background, calling her cat.

“Ma, if Pop comes home tell him to call Schofield and leave a message, okay? I want to know the minute he gets back, or else I going keep worrying about him. If Pop won't call, tell Herbie. Okay, Ma? Will you do that?”

“I tell Herbie to call you.”

“Good. And you call me too if you need something, okay? Anything. I'll get it if I can. You promise to call me?”

She fumbled with the phone, a raspy sound, like she was rubbing her hand over the mouthpiece.

“Ma,” I said. “Everything going be fine.”

She said nothing.

Then: “You… you need me send you something? You need…” Her voice trailed off.

I closed my eyes and leaned into the phone booth. Got to be so hard on her—me gone, Pop gone. Lucky Herbie was still there, and lucky he was getting big now, and stronger.

“I have everything I need, Ma.”

“Eddy?”

“Yeah?”

“What we going do?”

Words stuck in my throat. Just like they always did for Pop. I should never have joined the army. I should be home.

“Me and Herbie,” I said, searching for an answer. “Ma…we going find a way to hold everything together if they don't let Pop go. Don't worry. We going come out okay.”

There was a long silence.

“Ma?”

Mrs. Higashi came on the phone. “Eddy? I help your mama now. She's overcome. I take care of her, don't you worry, she going be fine.”

She hung up.

I stood holding the receiver, then slowly set it on the hook.